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6 Skype Alternatives Worth Considering

Skype might be the de facto choice for video and voice calls over the Internet. But here are other options you should explore.

Force of habit might make you default to Skype again and again in your office, without a second thought. After all, its usage is rampant -- and basic features are free.

Skype no longer releases the total number of its registered users, but the company reports that 300 million connected users is the average number of people using Skype on a monthly basis. Sure, chances are good that your coworkers, remote workers and business partners already have Skype IDs. And many people -- myself included -- would balk at the suggestion of abandoning the oh-so-familiar Voice-over-IP client, in favor of another VoIP setup, which includes its own rigmarole of inviting contacts to partake.

However, it is worth your time to poke around and check out the competition. For one thing, on the video call front, you can get a ton more for free from other vendors. Skype, now owned by Microsoft, limits you to a one-on-one video call for free -- and that's it. Otherwise, to initiate a call with three or more talking heads, you need to sign up for a Premium account, starting at $5 per month.

In a different vein, keep in mind that Skype has been scrutinized over security concerns. For some, depending on the nature of your calls and the kind of data shared, this might not be the biggest consideration. But if privacy and security are of paramount importance, you'll find services with built-in protection. No matter which vendor you choose, make sure to review the terms of service, so you know the data ownership ins and outs behind the scenes.

If you're up for giving a new service a spin, we found six Skype alternatives. The first, UberConference, tries to simplify the conference call experience.

I don't know how you feel, but dialing into a conference call with multiple parties can be a royal pain: You need to have a passcode or two at the ready to enter manually, only to encounter disembodied voices talking over one another and reintroducing themselves. With UberConference, invitees get an email and text message to join the call. The phone number they use to dial in authenticates them when they enter, no passcode necessary. UberConference's browser interface lets participants know who's talking at any given moment, and you can scope out everybody's details, thanks to its integration with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

The call organizer can mute, add and nix callers -- and "earmuff" certain parties, if you want to talk privately on the fly. The free service lets you start with five people. A pro version, at $10 a month, bumps you up to a max of 40 people on a call, plus you can save all your conference calls as MP3s.

Imagine your desktop screen populated with 12 bobbling heads during a video call. This is ooVoo's generous free service in action. As long as the call host uses ooVoo's software, participants at the other end simply click a browser link to join the call. The free version, which works on Macs, PCs, iOS, Android and tablets, lets you record video calls, upload them to YouTube, and record video greetings (PC only). The call overseer can also patch people in on regular phone numbers, and ooVoo's rates apply in this scenario.

On the downside, the free version displays third-party ads, calls are not encrypted -- and you can't share screens. It doesn't cost much to banish the ads and allow screen-sharing, though: $3 per month or $30 a year for ooVoo's premium plan. The paid plan also gives you roughly 16.5 hours (or 1,000 minutes) of video storage.

VSee, free for students and educational establishments, unites voice calls, video calls and screen- and file-sharing into one secure service. Unique to the program is its proprietary method for streaming video. VSee is light on bandwidth, and dynamically adjusts video quality when it senses network congestion. All traffic is protected using 256-bit AES encryption.

Even if you're not in the education world, you can still make group video calls for free to an unlimited number of users, as long as they install the client for Windows or Macs. The free account -- which lacks ads, by the way -- limits you to one screen-share per day. For $9 per month, you can do a show-and-tell with as many screens as you like; for $49 per month, all meeting participants can share screens. As of this writing, VSee's iPhone app is expected to roll out in a couple of weeks, with the Android version coming along later in the year. As you read this, the company is finalizing an update to its iPad app, which will enable it to receive screens.

Got a Google+ account? Using Google Hangouts, you can set up a video call for up to nine people for free. Participants do not need to be in your Circles to hop on a call, but they must have a Gmail address, along with Google's plug-in, available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Android or iOS users need to install the Google+ app on their phones.

During the call, you can upload and share your Google docs and edit collaboratively while you're at it. To increase the number of participants beyond nine, you can try Google Apps for Business for 30 days for free, and $5 a month per user after that. If you'd rather not look at your colleagues' mugs on a call, Google Talk is a handy voice-only tool with file sharing, IM and Gmail integration. On the desktop side, although Google Talk works on Windows machines only, smartphone users are good to go; iPhone users need to install Vtok to join in the fun.

If you depend on instant messaging to contact colleagues and clients, Open-source Jitsi does an admirable job of rolling IM and a bunch of other things -- video calls, voice calls, recording, desktop sharing and group chats -- into one service. For chat, it supports AIM, ICQ, Jabber, Yahoo Messenger, Facebook and others, conveniently lining up all IM contacts in one window. On the security side, Jitsi stands out. Calls are encrypted with ZRTP, and chats are protected with Off-the-Record (OTR) messaging. Jitsi is available for the Mac, PC and Linux, and although there are no plans for an iOS version, an Android app is in the works. (The Android download currently available is for "fearless alpha warriors only.") For support, you can subscribe and post messages to one or more mailing lists.

OpenTok, an SDK from TokBox, is for programmers who want to build customized videoconferencing components for websites. Invitees do not need to install any software. OpenTok, the company's SDK, is priced based on the number of participants and minutes everybody will use per month. The free plan gives you up to 25,000 minutes for up to three people, but once you go over three people, the group minute fees kick in. If seven people yak on a video call for half an hour, for instance, that's 210 group minutes. There are additional fees if you want to record, play back or store your calls. TokBox charges less than a penny a minute separately for recording the call and then for downloading the archived stream; you also pay a per-minute monthly fee for cloud storage.

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Comments

craig@firespott...

User Rank: Apprentice

Wed, 04/17/2013 - 23:36

re: 6 Skype Alternatives Worth Considering

Great article and great services. Quick correction on UberConference...the paid service for $10 gets up to 100 participants now, and the Free version can get up to 17 for now by linking social accounts, etc., to increase size.

Thank you for the information. I've used a few group calling services, but Kuvicall has been my favorite by far. The whole experience is very personalized, because it is a smaller company. So far I haven't been bombarded with fees, advertisements, or pressured to spend a lot of money.

It's very affordable and I'm able to use Kuvicall to conference call my associates on a weekly basis. Best Skype alternative by far for voice calling.

UberConference sounds like a very good alternative for conference calls with a small team, especially since it does not require a passcode. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard someone ask to re-send the passcode to a particular call (myself included). The "earmuff" feature sounds very interesting, especially if you want to share a quick, sensitive piece of information with just one party on the call. I wonder, though, if the "earmuffed" party can tell he or she is being blocked from hearing that part of the conversation when he or she hears silence from those involved in the private conversation.

Thx for the great article Aoife! VSee is designed for creative teams to get things done - we did a lot of study on creative team work - from doing a design critique to hacking out some code. As a service for the community, at the bottom of http://vsee.com/, we create a link to all the video conference options: http://vsee.com/videoconferenc...

VSee is also unique in that it provides end-to-end encryption - where your conversation is always private and off the record. It doesn't go to any servers (like oovoo, hangout, tokbox, etc) where that server has access to your raw audio/video. VSee is HIPAA compliant and great for telemedicine: http://vsee.com/telemedicine where we serve 2M+ Americans to allow them to see their doctors from a webcam.

Another option to consider is Kuvi. It is a group calling service that relies on your phone for the connection, so you don't get the dropped calls due to internet connection or data issues. The website is: kuvicall.com if you wanted to add it!

If you're looking for a Skype alternative that's focused on team collaboration then you should checkout what we're building at Speak ( www.speak.io ). The app is free and includes audio, video and screensharing out of the box in a quick and simple interface.